The HENNOCK branch of the Pinsent family descends from Robert Pinsent and Dorothy Carpenter through their son, the Thomas Pinsent who married Julian Stidstone in Hennock in 1617. This Thomas’s eldest son, another Robert Pinsent, married Urith Woolcombe of Chudleigh and inherited the main family farm at “Huxbeare Barton” when his father died in 1649. His line came to an end with the death of his great grandson, Robert Pinsent “ye fourth of Huxbeare” in 1711.
Thomas and Julian’s second son, John Pinsent inherited a smaller farm at “Knighton” (near what is now the village of Chudleigh Knighton). He married Phillipa Willmead and one of their sons, yet another Robert Pinsent, acquired a soap boiling operation and land in “Kelly” through his marriage into the Wilmead family. The DEVONPORT branch continues down through Robert’s son and heir, John Pinsent who married Margaret Luscombe in 1720. It can be traced to modern times.
When his father died, Thomas and Julian’s third son, another Thomas, missed out on the family property. Presumably, there was not enough to go around to support three sons. He went to work in a nearby tannery at “Slade” and married the above Phillipa’s sister, Julian Wilmead, who conveniently inherited the tannery from her grandfather, Michael Meardon in 1657.
Circumstantial evidence suggests that this Thomas and his wife Julian Pinsent had a son, Thomas who was born in around 1659 and died in 1697. Unfortunately, I can not find his birth record as there is an ill-timed break in the relevant parish records. For this reason, Thomas “junior’s” descendants have been assigned to a HENNOCK branch of the family. This appears to be a major subset of the larger DEVONPORT branch which can also be traced down into modern time.
The son of this uncertain Thomas, another Thomas Pinsent, moved to a farm at “Pitt” in Hennock sometime in the early 1700s, about the time that the last of his “cousins” – who lived in the adjacent farm at “Knighton” – died. Some of the “Knighton” land may have been transferred to “Pitt” as later records show that there was overlapping ownership.
The farm at “Pitt” remained in the family until sold by Thomas Pynsent (of Memorandum fame, see elsewhere). He built a modest “stately home” (“Pitt House”, near Chudleigh) on the farm and probably over-extended himself in the process. One of his three daughters married into the Willoughby family in 1875 and thereby found her self related, by marriage, to (Sir) Richard Alfred Pinsent, the Birmingham solicitor from the DEVONPORT line. Both of the families lived near Cheltenham at the time and they clearly knew each other.
One of the first Thomas Pinsent to live at “Pitt” farm had a nephew, John Pinsent who was a “merchant” in Newton Abbot. He had no less than seven sons! Several went up to London, where the youngest, Joseph, became a curmudgeonly “ship’s broker” who made a name for himself writing letters-to-the-editor (and also to the Prime Minister and other notables) in the 1820s on the subject of political economy. This Joseph, who was from the HENNOCK line married Anna Thomasin Croat Pinsent from the DEVONPORT branch and, after her death he married her cousin, Elizabeth Pinsent (as discussed elsewhere).
Two of Joseph’s older brothers were involved in the Newfoundland cod trade and carried “Letters of Marque” during the Napoleonic Wars. Clearly they were not above indulging in a little licensed piracy. One of these, John Pinsent, had a son Robert John, who went out to Newfoundland to help and eventually replace his aging uncle William who had first gone out to Newfoundland several decades earlier. Robert John became a local magistrate in Brigus. His son, Sir Robert John Pinsent, was later to become a “Justice of the Supreme Court” in Newfoundland. As my son will attest, his line still continues. Some of John Pinsent (the “merchant” of Newton Abbot’s) other sons farmed in Devon for a generation or two but most of the HENNOCK line had moved out of the County by the late 1800s. They are now scattered all over the world. Two of the aforesaid Joseph Pinsent’s sons resurrected the name “Pynsent”. It is still a recognizable sub-branch in the United Kingdom and Australia. For more on the rebirth of the Pynsent family, I suggest you turn to the attached booklet “The Pynsent Baronetcy: The Trials and Tribulations of a Litigious Family: 1687-1765″.
The following is a brief summary of the HENNOCK branch of the Pinsent family. For a full list of members visit the Branch Summary page and for more information on selected sons, I suggest you click through and read their biographies.
Slade and Pitt, Hennock
Thomas Pinsent (1633 – 1701) [Third son of Thomas and Julian Stidstone]
Thomas and Julian (née Stidstone’s) third son, Thomas Pinsent (1633 – 1701) married Julian Wilmeade in 1657 and acquired a tannery at “Slade Cross” in Hennock. The tannery is long gone but the site is on the A382 north of Bovey Tracey. Julian’s grandfather, Michael Meardon, named his granddaughter (Julian Wilmeade) as the “reversionary” recipient of his tannery (and other property at Poole Mill Down) after the death of his erstwhile daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Wrayford (née Wilmeade). He gave Elizabeth a “life interest” on the clear understanding that it would pass to Julian when she died. Perhaps predictably, Elizabeth’s son, John Wrayford, was reluctant to part with it when the time came and it took a suite in Court of Chancery to settle the issue in Julian’s favour [C9/409-244, 1661]. Her husband, Thomas Pinsent, took responsibility for the tannery in the early 1660s.
Thomas seems to have had a sister (missing from the records?) who married into the Meardon family as Cecil Torr (in his book “Wreyland Documents”) tells us that, in his will dated 1675, a John Meardon “desired (his) three brothers in law, Thomas Pinsent of Hennock, tanner; Jonas Pridham and John Pridham (of Bovey Tracey, clothier)” to act as “over-seers in trust” and guardians for his (John’s) under-age sons, Thomas and Michael Meardon. Simple enough: according to later documents, Thomas Pinsent invested £100 from John Meardon’s estate in the purchase of “1/4th part of a tenement in North Kelly” from William Horne and his son, and conveyed the same to John Meardon’s surviving son, Thomas Meardon, in 1688. Over time, Thomas the “tanner” from “Slade” seems to have become “Thomas Pinsent of Slade” and that is how he is described as in Hennock’s “Church Warden’s accounts” in 1691 and 1692. There is a stone in the floor of Hennock Church that notes his passing in 1701 and reminds us: “His glass is run: yours is almost done”. It is not a comforting thought.
Unfortunately, I can find no evidence of Thomas and Julian ever having had children. However, they may have lived in Bovey Tracey rather than Hennock and there is a frustrating break in its parish register between 1654 and 1659. They could have had a son named Thomas born and baptized in Bovey Tracey shortly after their marriage. If so, he would have been a likely candidate to have married Ann Waters in 1678, and thus be able to take credit for fathering Thomas Pinsent of Pitt (1691 – 1777) and thus for founding the HENNOCK family line. Given the uncertainties around this Thomas’s parentage, the line is deemed to start with Thomas and Ann Waters.
After Thomas’s death, the tannery passed to a Simon Pinsent (xxxx – 1744). He may have been another early son by Ann Waters and thus one of Thomas Pinsent of “Pitt’s” brothers. However, that is speculation. If true, Simon must have been a fairly young man when his father died in 1701 as that was the year he married Amy Puddicombe.
Simon and Amy had a large family including several sons, Thomas Pinsent (1706 – xxxx), Hugh Pinsent (1708 – 1755), John Pinsent (1714 – xxxx) and William Pinsent (1721 – xxxx) who are, strangely, all unaccounted for. Perhaps they died in infancy as this was around the time of the plague that killed off the Pinsent heirs of both “Huxbeare” and “Knighton”. There is an unfortunate break in the Hennock “Churchwardens’ accounts” from 1692 to 1728 but it seems that Simon Pinsent paid rates for “Slade” in the early 1730s. He died in Hennock in 1744 but, by then, he was no longer “of Slade”. The tannery was then firmly in the hands of Thomas and Ann Water’s son Thomas Pinsent “of Pitt”. He paid the parish rates for “Slade” between 1733 and 1740 and then, in all likelihood, sold it.
From Thomas Pinsent of “Pitt” (1691 – 1777) onward we are on firmer ground and I agree with what a later Thomas Pynsent “of Pitt” wrote regarding his descent in 1843. A memorial stone in Hennock Church tells us that Thomas “of Pitt” was 87 years old when he died in 1777 – which is consistent with his being the son of Thomas Pinsent and Ann Waters and born in Bovey Tracy. It also tells us that he and his wife Mary, who died in 1774, had been married for 63 years. This too is consistent with the marriage of Thomas Pinsent, “tanner of Hennock” and Mary Gale of Teigngrace in 1712. The relationships are more clearly described in the biographical section of this family review.
“Pitt” was a substantial farm near Chudleigh Knighton. So, where did it come from? The most likely scenario is that although “Knighton” farm was sold off after the last Thomas Pinsent “of Knighton” died, he left part of his estate to his nearest male relation, who just happened to be the son of one his first cousins (the Thomas Pinsent born in Bovey Tracey in 1691). Thomas of Pinsent “of Pitt”, as he soon became would have been the right age to take over the running of a large farm. Thomas Pinsent and his wife, Mary (née Gale) had a large family including four sons, Thomas Pinsent (1717 – 1802), Robert Pinsent (1721 – 1783), Gilbert Pinsent (1724 – 1794) and John Pinsent (1728 – 1772) and it is through them (or at least the last three of them) that the various Hennock lines descend. The eldest son, Thomas, inherited “Pitt”. He married Mary Mudge in 1761 but had no children, so the bulk of his estate passed to one of his nephews: more about that later.
Robert Pinsent (1721 – 1783), the second son, became a “serge-maker” and “shopkeeper” in Newton Abbot. He married Eleanor Shapley and had a large family; however, most of his children died young and only one of his sons seems to have furthered the family line. Robert’s eldest surviving son, another Robert Pinsent (1750 – 1786) became a “tallow chandler” in Newton Abbot at about the same time as his very distant (but far more affluent cousin) Thomas Pinsent (1754 – 1841) from the DEVONPORT line (discussed previously). Robert Pinsent “junior” married Thomas’s daughter Mary Pinsent in 1771. As both families lived in Newton Abbot, it is not surprising that they came together. Whether they recognized common ancestry, I do not know. Sadly, Mary died shortly after the marriage and Robert sold her half-interest in a property called “Leigh” to her uncle, Mr. John Pinsent of Moretenhampstead, the patriarch of the DEVONPORT line, in 1775. Robert married Mary Jordan in 1774 but died soon after. There is nothing to suggest that he ever had children.
Robert “senior’s” next youngest son, John Pinsent (1757 – xxxx), most likely joined the army. Military records show that a “woolcomber” from Newton Bushell (Newton Abbot) called John Pinsent served with the “First Regiment of Foot” in Canada before being admitted to the Royal Hospital at Chelsea as a Pensioner, in 1802. Again, I am not aware of any marriage or children. However, it is possible that this is the same John Pinsent who moved to Great Torrington, in North Devon. If so, he became a (stone) “mason” after leaving the army. He married twice, had a daughter named Elizabeth and died in 1833.
In 1777, John’s younger brother, William Pinsent (1760 – xxxx), was apprenticed to the same bakery in Exeter that his cousin John Pinsent (1753 – 1821) had been sent to ten years earlier (see below). Unfortunately, William drops out of sight. Whether he died, emigrated or just moved out of the district is unclear.
Robert and Eleanor’s fourth and youngest son, Charles Pinsent (1762 – 1816) did marry and extend the family line. He married Elizabeth Butter in 1791 and they had a son and five daughters baptized in St. Marylebone Parish, in London in the late 1790s and early 1800s. Charles was a “carpenter” and a “builder” who seems to have shared a builders yard on Edward Street in Portman Square with his cousin, John Pinsent (1753 – 1821), (see below) in the 1790s, before moving to his own site on Dean Street, in St. Anne’s parish Soho at the turn of the century. There was always building work to be done in London. Charles Pinsent appears in London City Directories and he pops up as a plaintiff in a Court Case at the “Old Bailey”, in 1805. Evidently, John Murphy and George Harrison stole a cartload of previously used lumber from his yard. Unfortunately for them, there was wall-paper still attached to some of the wood and Charles was able to match the design to similar paper on wood that was still in his possession! The lumber was only valued at around £1. but theft was not tolerated in those days and, when convicted, the defendants were sentenced to deportation. Charles and Elizabeth’s only son, Charles Thomas Pinsent (1794 – 1795), died young.
Thomas Pinsent of Pitt’s third son, Gilbert Pinsent (1724 – 1794) stayed on in Newton Abbot as a “woolcomber” but was either less successful, or just less fortunate than his brothers. He was forced into bankruptcy in 1761. Gilbert had married Rebecca Collins in 1746 and they had had a large family; however, only one son, Robert Pinsent (1758 – xxxx) seems have made it through childhood. There is no mentioned of him in his Uncle Thomas Pinsent (the second), “of Pitt’s” will, dated 1791, though, so he had probably died fairly young. Thomas (as mentioned previously) had no children of his own; so he gave legacies to all his then living nephews.
Thomas Pinsent (the first) “of Pitt’s” fourth son, John Pinsent, became a “stapler” or “wool merchant” in Newton Abbot. He married Susanna Pooke in 1750 and had no less than seven surviving sons: John Pinsent (1753 – 1821), Robert Pinsent (1753 – 1787); Thomas Pinsent (1785 – xxxx), William Pinsent (1757 – 1835), Gilbert Pinsent (1758 – 1835), Charles Pinsent (1766 – 1826) and Joseph Pinsent (1770 – 1835). We have met some of them before: I think Thomas Pinsent was a “sailor” who served with the “Royal Navy” on H.M.S. Exeter and died at sea, and Joseph Pinsent was was the “ship’s broker” in London who complicated (or perhaps simplified?) the gene pool by marrying not one but two of his distant “cousins” from the DEVONPORT line. We will get back to him later.
The other brothers include John Pinsent, who was a “baker” who went up to London and set up in business in Edward Street, Portman Square. Initially, he seems to have shared the property with his “cousin” Charles Pinsent, the “builder” mentioned above, until he moved to Soho. John’s bakery was not in the most salubrious part of town but it was close enough to Portman Square to claim a connection and it was later claimed (rightly or wrongly) to have been a “Bread and Biscuit Baker to His Majesty” (Morning Post: Tuesday 15th May 1838).
John’s brother William Pinsent (1757 – 1835) had gone out to Newfoundland as an “agent” for a company servicing the cod fishery and he had set up his own business in Port de Grave. He needed a partner in England, and he teamed up with John, who was well located in London. In the 1790s, John’s focus seems to have shifted from baking to shipping. By 1804, the brothers owned and operated at least eight ships. They carried cod into Europe and returned to Newfoundland with manufactured goods. It was a risky business, especially during the Napoleonic wars, and they lost ships to enemy action (the “Amey” was taken off Porto Bar with 15,000 quintals of fish on board in 1798) and bad weather (the “William and John” was driven onto Sandwich flats in a gale in January 1800). Like many others, they took out “Letters of Marque” against France, Spain and the United Provinces (America) – and indulged in a bit of licensed privateering. Another of John’s brothers, Robert Pinsent, trained as a peruk (wig) maker at a time when wigs were very much in vogue. He followed John up to London and was living with him when he wrote his will. He died relatively young and unmarried.
The boys’ parents, John and Susanna (née Pooke) died within days of each other, in 1772 – which must have considerably disrupted the family. However, by then, the elder sons (John, William, Thomas and Robert) were already launched on their respective careers. Nevertheless, the younger ones (Gilbert, Charles, Samuel [who died young] and Joseph) needed a home and seem to have found one with their Uncle Thomas and his wife, Mary (née Mudge) at “Pitt Farm”. Having no children of their own, Thomas and Mary may, in fact, have been pleased to have their young nephews move in and help out. Perhaps it is not surprising that two of the youngsters eventually became farmers. In all, five of the brothers married and had children: John Pinsent (1753 – 1821); William Pinsent (1757 – 1835); Gilbert Pinsent (1758 – 1835); Charles Pinsent (1766 – 1826) and Joseph Pinsent (1770 – 1835). We will follow the descent of each of them in turn.
John Pinsent (1753 – 1821) and William Pinsent (1757 – 1835)
The eldest of John Pinsent and Susanna (née Pooke’s) sons, John Pinsent, was apprenticed to a “baker” in Exeter and married one of his daughters. John and Susanna (née Speare) moved up to London and, as previously mentioned, established a bakery on Edward Street, near Portman Square in St. Marylebone Parish. John’s brother William, meanwhile, went out to Newfoundland and, after acting as “agent” for others involved in the cod-fishery, set up his own business in Port de Grave – one of many small harbours around the coast of Conception Bay. The two brothers became partners in the firm of “J. and W. Pinsent, Merchants, Edward Street Port Man Square, London.” William ran the Newfoundland part and John handled the London end of the business.
William married Amy Richards, in 1797. It was rather late in life for him and it must have come as quite a surprise when their first child, a son, arrived twenty years later! Unfortunately William Pinsent (1818 – 1840) was far too young to help his father out when his brother John died in London in 1821.
John and Susanna (née Speare) had two daughters and a son, Robert John Pinsent (1798 – 1876), and his will, which has survived, shows that he gave his son a “right of first refusal” to buy out his sisters’ shares in his (John’s) interest in the fishery business. They cashed out. William was getting on in years so Robert John sold the bakery and wound up the London end of the shipping business. He went out to Newfoundland to help out his Uncle William in the mid-1820s. His mother, Susanna, meanwhile, retired to Cullompton in Devon with one of her daughters. William and Robert John ran the business together until William was comfortable retiring back to Devon. He died in Teignmouth, in 1837. Any plan Robert John and Amy may have had to pass the business along to William Pinsent, “junior”, when he came of age died with him in 1841. It was left to Amy and Robert John to windup the enterprise, which they did shortly before Amy died later the same year.
The “Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador” and other sources tell us that Robert John Pinsent was William’s son, and that he was born in Port de Grave; however, they are mistaken. Robert John had clearly “come from away” (as they say in Newfoundland). He was born and he later died in London. After winding up the business, Robert John became a prominent “merchant” in his own right in Brigus and a “Magistrate” in Harbour Grace. He was appointed a “Justice of the Peace” for the Northern District which included the out-ports of Labrador. It was a tricky job, especially when religious tensions ran high as they often did around election time. Some elections were almost literally fought! He read the “Riot Act” in Harbour Grace in 1861 but decided not to send in the troops to break up what was clearly a growing “affray” as he realized that it would increase the tension, not lessen it, and it could well lead to bloodshed.
Robert John Pinsent married Louisa Broome Williams in 1828. She came from a well-connected St. John’s family and considerably raised the social profile of the family. They had three sons who grew to adulthood: another Robert John Pinsent (1834 – 1893), Thomas Williams Pinsent (1837 – 1890) and Charles Speare Pinsent (1838 – 1914).
Putting the second Robert John Pinsent aside for a moment, Thomas Williams (sic) Pinsent was an accountant who became “collector of rates and taxes for the General Water Co. of St. John’s.” He married Sophia Milroy and they had a son, Arthur Alfred Pinsent (1885 – 1890) who, sadly, died of diphtheria while he was still a boy. Thomas Williams’s brother, Charles Speare Pinsent also became an accountant. He rose through the Colonial banking system and was (perhaps unfortunately) appointed manager of the “Union Bank of Newfoundland” in 1894 – shortly before a financial crisis forced both the Colony of Newfoundland and the banking system into bankruptcy! The bank’s “Board of Directors”, included several senior politicians who were charged with bond fraud, and with issuing false financial statements. Charles Speare was initially indicted with them; however, his charges were dropped and he was asked to help sort out the mess and wind up the bank.
Apparently there were no hard feelings. Charles Speare was appointed “Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod” in the Newfoundland Legislature. He married Blanche Brown, in St. John’s, in 1883 and they had three daughters and a son, Earl Speare Pinsent (1887 – 1958). Earl Speare became a “barrister” and “solicitor” in St. John’s, Newfoundland. He married Augusta Beatrix Dickinson and had a son and two daughters. Augusta died in 1937 and Earl married Phyllis Ruth Hadwill a few years later.
Earl Speare’s son, Charles Douglas Pinsent (1919 – xxxx) also became a “lawyer”. He married Madeline Waterman and they too had a son, Kenneth Douglas Pinsent (1953 – 1984). Kenneth moved to California where he married Julie M. Thompson in 1976. Sadly, Kenneth died in a road accident a few years later. I am not aware of any “American cousins”.
Charles Speare’s elder brother, the second Robert John Pinsent (1834 – 1893) was born shortly before his father wound up the family fishery business in Port de Grave and set himself up as a “merchant” in Brigus and a “Justice of the Peace” on the Coast of Labrador. Robert John “junior” studied law and, after a singularly unsuccessful political career – in which he consistently backed the wrong side in the seemingly never-ending argument as to whether the Colony should join with Canada (it eventually did, in 1949), he became a member of the (appointed) “Legislative Assembly” and, later, a “Judge of the Supreme Court” in Newfoundland.
Robert John Pinsent’s first marriage, in 1856, was to Anna Brown Cooke the daughter of an English “merchant” in Lisbon, Portugal. They had eight children, including five sons over a period of ten years. Three of the sons, John Cooke Pinsent (1861 – 1861), William Satterley Pinsent (1864 – 1865) and Robert Hedley Vicars Pinsent (1862 – 1888) either died in infancy or, in the latter case, as a young man. The other two, Charles Augustus Maxwell Pinsent (1866 – 1910) and Arthur Newman Pinsent (1867 – 1946) lived to maturity and stayed on in Newfoundland after their father’s death in 1893.
Charles Augustus, the elder of the two, became a “businessman” in St. John’s and, for a while at least, “Vice-consul” for Portugal. He eventually inherited his father’s house in “Salmonier” outside of St. John’s and married Fanny Sophia Colley, the daughter of a well-respected “clergyman” in 1896. They had a short-lived daughter the following year but no male heirs. Charles’s younger brother Arthur went out to Saskatchewan – probably to farm. However, he signed up for military service during the First World War. Why he did so is not exactly clear as he was over-age and had to lie to get in. He was 48 years old! Alfred was sent to France. He served and returned, and was discharged as “physically unfit”, in 1918. He returned to Saskatchewan, where he applied for a “Homesteading Grant” in 1927. As far as I know, he never married.
Two of Sir Robert’s three daughters from the first marriage are of particular note. One, Louisa Catherine Pinsent (1858 – 1890), married an aspiring “politician” named George Shea in 1890 but died in childbirth a few years later. Her elder sister Lucretia Anna Maude Pinsent (1857 – 1934) took to Religion and, for a while, was the “Roman Catholic Abbess” in Teignmouth in Devon. Her mother, who was Portuguese, had presumably brought her up in the Catholic faith. Her father was staunchly Anglican and some of his Newfoundland connections found this development extremely disturbing! Later, as “Abbess Mechtildis Pynsent” (sic), Lucretia established a house for English “Benedictine” nuns in Rome. It failed acrimoniously in 1901. One of her nuns, who came from a wealthy family had promised to fund the purchase of a house for the Order. However, she ran-off with a priest and the funds never materialized. Lucretia wrote several scathing letters to editor of “The Times” denouncing the Church of Rome establishment – doubtless to the delight of her Protestant English readers. Sir Robert John Pinsent’s marriage to Anna Brown Cooke ended in “Her Majesty’s Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes” in England in 1870.
Robert John married Emily Hetty Sabine Homfray, the daughter of the Rector of Bintry and Themelthorpe in Norfolk. Emily lived and grew up a few miles away from Robert’s father’s Uncle Ferdinand Alfred Pynsent (sic) (1822 – 1894) who was the rector of the next parish over, so it is not hard to see how they met. We will meet this particular Reverend gentleman later. Robert and Emily had seven children including three sons, Robert John Ferrier Homfray Pinsent (1874 – 1899), Francis Wingfield Homfray Pinsent (1875 – 1948) and Guy Homfray Pinsent (1889 – 1972). The eldest of the three (Robert) moved to Montreal and worked in the lumber business. However, he returned to Newfoundland to marry Annie March in 1896. It was a short-lived marriage as he succumbed to tuberculosis a few years later. They had no children that I am aware of. Annie (née March) never remarried. She became a “Methodist Missionary” in Japan in the early 1900s but later retired back to Newfoundland.
Robert’s youngest brother, Guy Homfray Pinsent, was a young boy when his father died. He was educated at the “Blue Coat School”, in Hertford and worked for a bank in Buenos Aires, in Argentina, before joining the “Royal Field Artillery” at the start of the First World War. He served in France and was awarded a “Military Cross” for gallantry in 1915. The citation says that while under heavy fire he led his men from the safety of their trench to dig their colleagues out of a collapsed gun battery. After the war, he served as a “District Officer” in the Sudan and then joined the “North Lancashire (Loyal) Regiment”, as a Captain, in 1921. Guy married Ethyl Betty Brittan, the daughter of Charles Brittan, a well-known landscape artist, in 1923, but they had no children. After the Second World War, Guy became a director of “Henekey’s Limited”, a liquor company.
Robert John Pinsent (“junior”) maintained strong links to England and he sent several of his children “home” for their education. He frequently returned for visits and was horrified to find that the English public knew very little about Newfoundland. This prompted him to read a paper entitled “Newfoundland Our Oldest Colony” at the Royal Colonial Institute in London, in 1884. It helped bring him to national attention.
A few years later, he was (in his legal capacity) asked to define the parameters of France’s residual fishing rights in and around the coast of Newfoundland. The French owned two small islands, Saint Pierre and Miquelon off the South coast of the Newfoundland and, through a very generous interpretation of the Treaty of Versailles, they were giving the colony’s English fishermen considerable grief around what they considered “their” part of the coast.
Along with his legal assessment, he published an article in “The Nineteenth Century” magazine entitled “French Fishery Claims in Newfoundland.” In it, he argued that the treaty of Versailles (1783) gave the French very specific and limited rights to fish for cod, and that they had no right whatsoever to interfere with Newfoundlanders’ who were canning lobsters. That year, 1890, he received a knighthood from Queen Victoria.
Sir Robert married twice and had a large family. He died rather unexpectedly while visiting his (second) father-in-law’s rectory in Norfolk, in 1893. His widow “Lady Pinsent” was with him at the time and she stayed on in England. Much of her late husband’s estate was now in the hands of his eldest son by the earlier marriage, so she never went back to Newfoundland.
Having had eight sons, one would have thought Sir Robert’s line of descent would have been secure. However, but for Francis Wingfield Homfray Pinsent, it would have ended. “Frank”, as he was known, trained as a “surveyor” in Newfoundland and then moved to England and lived in London with his mother before joining the “Inland Revenue Valuation Office” in Plymouth in 1910. He brought the family full-circle back to its Devon roots. A few years later, he bought three fields above the railway station at Horrabridge and built a house there. He commuted to his work in Plymouth by rail. Francis married Janet Frances Cowtan in 1911 and they had an only son, Robert John Francis Homfray Pinsent (1916 – 1987). Janet died in 1938 and “Frank” married Anna Marie Stehrenberger in 1941. By her, he had a daughter who is still living.
Robert John Francis Homfray Pinsent, or “Robin” as he was known, graduated from “Cambridge University” and “Charing Cross Hospital” during the Second World War and served in the “Royal Army Medical Corps.” during the war. He joined a medical practice in Handsworth, Birmingham after the war and proceeded to modernize its approach to family medicine. He wrote a book on the subject and later became a founding member of “The Royal College of General Practitioners”. He was its “Research Director” and edited its newsletter for many years. It is through his early interest that this study of the Pinsent family came about. “Robin” married Ruth McKechnie Morrison, in London, in 1941, and they had a son, Robert Hugh Pinsent (1946 – xxxx) (myself), and three daughters who are also still living. I have a son who is now married, but that is another story.
Gilbert Pinsent (1758 – 1835)
Stepping back to Newton Abbot in the mid 1700s, John Pinsent and Susanna Pooke’s third son, Gilbert Pinsent (1758 – 1835), who had gone to “Pitt Farm” after their death and been taught to farm by his Uncle Thomas, went on to become a successful farmer in his own right. Land Tax records show that Gilbert started out as a tenant farmer at “Ponswin”, in Kingsteignton and he later moved to “Aller Barton”, in Abbotskerswell. Gilbert married Margaret Snow in 1750 and they had two sons William Pinsent (1797 – 1882) and John Pinsent (1799 – 1858) who survived into adulthood and, at first at least, followed their father into farming.
At some point, William seems to have lost interest in agriculture – which was going through a rough patch in the early Victorian era – and turned his hand to trade. He became a “bookseller”. In 1862, a London publisher sued him for £10 over a disputed account. The issue seems to have been cleared up amicably enough, though. William married Jane Crockwell in 1822 and they had several children including an eldest son William Pinsent (1825 – 1854) who joined the army. He served with the “Coldstream Guards” and was part of the “Tower of London” garrison in 1851. William had been promoted to “sergeant” by the time he died, unmarried, in 1894.
William and Jane (née Crockwell) also had a son John Pinsent (1829 – xxxx) who is, unfortunately, another loose end. He may have died young or perhaps emigrated. Another son, Thomas Pinsent (1833 – 1851) lived with his mother in Plymouth and was still a young man when he died there. She died there a few years later.
William and Jane’s fourth son, Charles Henry Crockwell Pinsent (1835 – xxxx) was a “clerk” and perhaps, eventually, a “drapery store keeper” (?) in Plymouth. He married Mary Ann Cann in 1858, however, I am not aware of any children by the marriage. Mary Ann died ten years later and Charles married Sarah Staines. They seem to have gone out to Canada in the 1870s, or perhaps he went alone as there was a Charles Pinsent who was an Englishman living in New Brunswick, in Eastern Canada, in 1881. If he was this individual, Sarah must have died by then as he was married to a local girl called Mary (surname unknown).
When Gilbert Pinsent died in 1835, his second son, John Pinsent (the above William’s younger brother) took over the farm at “Aller Barton”. He lived there with his family until around 1847 and then moved to a larger farm at “Ware Barton” (300 acres), in Kingsteignton. He was a contemporary and undoubtedly an acquaintance of Thomas Pinsent of “Greenhill” in the parish, and of his son John Ball Pinsent, the “brewer” in Highweek from the DEVONPORT branch of the family. John was a well-regarded member of the community. He was a Non-conformist, and quite prepared to take on the local clergy. At one point, he even took the Rev. Dr. Richards of Teignmouth to court claiming that his bull terrier killed one of his ewes!
John married Ann Brock in 1831 and they had no less than eleven children, including four surviving sons: John Pinsent (1838 – 1916), Gilbert Pinsent (1840 – 1918), James Pinsent (1842 – 1902) and Henry Pinsent (1844 – 1894). When John “senior” died, in 1858, his widow, Ann, stayed on at “Ware Barton” and ran it with the help of her children – at least until they either left home to marry or, as in the case of James, took-off to see the world. He went out to Australia and died, unmarried in what is now Papua New Guinea. Ann (née Brock’s) son, John Pinsent, married Catherine Whidborne in 1865 and they moved to a smaller farm (165 acres) called “Middle Roccombe”, in Combeinteignhead. There, they also had a large family, consisting of no less than eight surviving daughters and one surviving son. In 1883, the family left Devon and moved to a larger farm called “Gambledown”, in Sherfield English, in Hampshire. It was from there that John married-off most of his daughters.
John and Catherine’s only son was, perhaps predictably, also called John Pinsent (1880 – 1925). He seems to have had no interest in farming. He also turned against his grandfather’s and father’s religious non-conformity. He became a “Minister” in the Church of England and, for several years, was a “curate” at Winchcombe, in Somerset.
The Reverend John Pinsent married Edith Mary Lane in 1921 and they had two children, a son, who was also called John Pinsent (1922 – 1995), and a daughter. At some point, the Reverend John seems to have had a crisis of faith and, according to Freeman’s Journal (11th December 1924) switched to the “Church of Rome”. At any rate, he seems to have decided to emigrate to Australia and make a new start. The family embarked for Melbourne on the “S.S. Hobson’s Bay” on 31st March 1925. Sadly, John died at sea about three weeks into the journey and never arrived. His widow and children returned to England. Predictably, it took a while to straighten out his affairs as “Letters of Administration” had to be processed in Australia before being sent back to England.
The curate’s son, John Pinsent, flew Catalina Flying Boats for the “Royal Air Force” during the Second World War, and then became a classical scholar and a “Senior Lecturer” at Liverpool University. He led tours in Greece and was both the editor and an avid contributor to a magazine he founded entitled the “Liverpool Classical Monthly”. John worked with my father on this “Single Name” study and they corresponded about it throughout the 1960s and 1970s. “Cousin John” as my father called him, deserves credit for some of information in the database. John married three times: to Barbara Crumley in 1946, Margaret Bowen in 1955 and Helena V. Hurt in 1994. John and Margaret had three children: two sons and a daughter. Their eldest son has since died; however the other two are still living.
When John Pinsent and Catherine (née Whidborne) moved to “Middle Roccombe”, John’s brother, Gilbert Pinsent, took over the farm at “Ware Barton” and ran it with the help of his younger brother James and an unmarried sister. James had a sideline as a “manure agent” (fertilizer salesman) but wanted more out of life. He took off for Australia. He appears to have died, unmarried, in Papua New Guinea. The local papers show that the farm was hit by an arson attack in 1868, not long after Gilbert took over. All he could do was watch as thirteen ricks of wheat and two of oats went up in flames. The fire was probably the work of two young boys who were, suspiciously, found with matches; however, it was hard to prove their involvement. Fortunately, the ricks were insured.
Gilbert was on the Newton Abbot “Board of Guardians”, and helped monitor the health of the community, throughout the 1870s and beyond. He was active in community matters well into the 1880s. Gilbert married Clara Bridgeman in 1880 and they had two daughters before he, like his brother John Pinsent, sold up and left the county. In 1888, he moved to Scrope Farm, in Froxford, in Wiltshire. While there, Gilbert and Clara had a son, Gilbert Soudon Pinsent (1889 – xxxx) who, like his cousin the Reverend John Pinsent (above), had no interest in farming. Gilbert “junior” wanted to be a banker. When he retired, his father (Gilbert “senior”) gave up the farm. Gilbert Soudon moved to Argentina where he met and married Agnes Mabel Broome. They had at least two children, one of whom, John Soudon Pinsent (1916 – 1941) was a sergeant in the “Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve” during the Second World War. He died on active service defending Malta.
Henry Pinsent, the youngest of John and Ann (née Brock’s) four sons, married Mary Langmead in 1870 and moved to Doddiscombleigh where he ran “Town Farm” (215 acres) with the help of local labourers. Henry and Mary later moved to “Whitestone Farm”, in Bovey Tracey. It had previously been in the Langmead family and it may well have been Mary’s father’s farm. Henry Pinsent was a prominent member of the local community and of the parish vestry.
Henry and Mary had a son Henry James Pinsent (1872 – 1927) who was fortunate to survive an accident sustained while he was out tending to the sheep. His shotgun accidentally discharged as he negotiated a hedge and damaged his hand and forearm. Henry James married Kate Hewett, who was a farmer’s daughter from Surrey, in 1900. They farmed at “Whitestone” for a few years after Henry “senior”, died. However, they sold up and moved to Canada in 1904. Henry James was living in Vernon, in British Columbia in 1919. He died in New Westminster (near Vancouver) in 1927. Their son, Henry Hewett Pinsent (1901 – 1938), seems to have left the land and, perhaps surprisingly, become a seaman. When his father died, he moved to the United States where he settled, and in due course applied for Citizenship. Henry Hewett lived in California and died in San Francisco without, as far as I know, having married or had children.
Charles Pinsent (1766 – 1826)
Returning to Newton Abbot in the 1700s, John and Susanna’s (Pooke) son Charles Pinsent, was one of four brothers who went to live with their uncle, Thomas Pinsent (1717 – 1802), at “Pitt Farm” after their parents died. Samuel Pinsent died young; however, the other three learnt to farm and two of them, Gilbert (see above) and Joseph (see below) left to run their own farms. Charles; however, stayed on to help out his uncle and he became his principal heir. Charles took over the farm when his uncle died in 1802.
A “Devonshire Association” Report on “Pitt Farm” published in 1996 shows that it was substantially rebuilt in the early 1800s and that the cider cellar was over-built for the capacity of the farm. There was room to store 400 hogsheads (21,600 gallons) of cider but the farm only had the capacity to produce enough apples for 28 hogsheads (1,512 gallons). Perhaps Charles or someone else in the family was thinking of becoming a “cider-merchant”. It is worth noting that one of his DEVONPORT “cousins” was then running a “drapery” in Devonport and he had an eye on acquiring a “brewery” for one of his sons. Charles married Mary Yeo in 1799 and had a son, Thomas Pynsent (1808 – 1887) and two daughters before he died, at Pitt, in 1826. There is a memorial to him on the Chancel wall in Hennock Church.
Charles’s son and principal heir, Thomas Pynsent (1808 – 1887) attended “Pynsent’s Free School”, in Chudleigh, as a boy and was much taken by the story of its foundation and endowment in 1668 by a “Prothonotary” (“senior clerk”) in the “Court of Common Pleas”. Evidently, this John Pynsent (whose family had come from Combe, in Bovey Tracey) had died a wealthy man and endowed the school with £30 per annum in perpetuity. He had no sons, so he gave the rest of his estate to a nephew, William Pynsent, who used the proceeds to purchase a baronetcy. It cost him £1,085. The first baronet died in 1719 and left his estate to his son, another William Pynsent, who died without any obvious heir in 1765. He left his by then considerable land holdings in Burton in Somerset and Urchfont in Wiltshire to the then Prime Minister, William Pitt (a.k.a. “The Great Commoner”). Pitt promptly abandoned the House of Commons and, much to the annoyance of his supporters, took the title of Earl of Chatham. Sir William apparently made the bequest in appreciation of Pitt’s politics. Needless to say, it caused quite a stir in the Coffee Houses in London. Pitt showed his appreciation for the gift – which was from someone he had never met – by building the “Burton Pynsent Monument” atop Troy Hill at Curry Rivel in Somerset.
Thomas’s uncle, Joseph Pinsent, who we will meet shortly, had also been intrigued by the story of the London lawyer and his link to the baronetcy. He and his then wife Elizabeth (née Pinsent) named their first son, Joseph William Pitt Burton Pinsent (1804 – 1805) in his honour. The boy died an infant but, undaunted, his parents named their second son Joseph Burton Pinsent (1806 – 1874). He survived and we will also meet him shortly.
Thomas Pynsent thought of himself a “landed gentleman” and he seems to have had very little interest in farming. He commissioned the building of a modest “stately home” (“Pitt House”) in 1838 but financially over-extended himself and as far as I am aware never lived there. Two days before his marriage to Jane Sparrow in 1843, he wrote the “memorandum” concerning his ancestry referred to at the beginning of this discussion and elsewhere in the history. He had delved into the parish records to try and figure out his ancestry. Perhaps Thomas hoped to find a link to the extinct baronetcy. If so, he would have been disappointed as the lines are quite separate. He deserves credit for not fabricating a connection, as many would have done.
When he wrote the memorandum, Thomas committed himself and his heirs to use “Pynsent” as their surname. Sadly, Thomas’s only son, Vernon Pynsent (1845 – 1845), died in infancy so his plan to resurrect the Pynsent name might have come to nothing had he not managed to persuade some of his cousins to follow suit. His uncle Joseph’s son, Joseph Burton Pinsent (mentioned above) used the name after going out to Australia in 1852 and his descendants still use it to this day. Joseph Burton’s sister, Mary Anna Pynsent (1810 – 1875), a schoolmistress in Manaton in the 1850s and 1860s, changed her name and another of Joseph’s sons, this time by his third wife, Ann Tucker, who was christened Charles Pitt Pinsent (1824 – 1903) also converted. Charles passed the “Pynsent” name down into modern times through to his children. His brother, the Reverend Ferdinand Alfred Pynsent (1822 – 1894) who we met earlier also went along with it. However, he had no children. The Lady Abbess mentioned above also changed her name although why I am not sure as she was a much more distant relation. Thomas Pynsent was obviously very persuasive.
Thomas Pynsent sold “Pitt Farm” and “Pitt House” soon after or while the new house was being built. It’s new owner passed it along to Mr. Charles Seal-Hayne, who was to be the local “Liberal” Member of Parliament from 1885 to 1903. Shortly after the sale, Thomas Pynsent and his wife Jane (née Sparrow) embarked on the “Grand Tour” of Europe and they spent several years abroad. Charles Pitt Pynsent and his wife, Georgiana Helen (née Ball) who had made a fortune running sheep in Australia joined them for at least part of the time. We will meet them again later. Thomas Pynsent’s three daughters were born on the Continent. The eldest, Margaret Jane Pynsent (1844 – 1920) was born in Paris and the other two, Florence Lombe Pynsent (1847 – 1943) and Jane Augusta Pynsent (1849 – 1902), were born in Florence. Jane (née Sparrow) left some of her belongings in London with one of her brothers’-in-law while living abroad and the chests and cases proved to be too big a temptation for some of his household servants. They broke in and stole, among other things, some very valuable cameos – which roused the suspicion of an honest “pawnbroker”, and the extreme indignation of the local “magistrate”.
Thomas and Jane (née Sparrow) eventually returned to England and bought property in Northam, near Bideford on Devon’s north coast. Thomas was to become an active proponent of the “Northam Burrows Hotel and Villa Project” in the 1860s and 1870s. The idea was to entice visitors to Northam to enjoy the sea-air and the beauty of the place – much as Torquay had managed to do on the south coast. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but there was no rail link to Northam so access was difficult and, fatally, it lacked good drainage! Nevertheless, Thomas made a fortune both out of the initial development and by selling land for housing.
Thomas was a Liberal and politically active, and he achieved some notoriety in 1868 by heckling the local Conservative Candidate, Sir Stafford Northcote when he visited Bideford. Some of his distant relations were not amused. On the 25th September 1868, the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette carried the following item: “The Mr. Pynsent who was insolent to Sir S. Northcote at Barnstaple and Bideford is not Mr. Pinsent, a respectable hay and straw vendor, Market-place, but his cousin Thomas, who has changed the “i” into “y,” and is now called Thomas Pynsent, Esquire.” It must have been a very distant DEVONPORT cousin. I suspect it was Thomas Pinsent (1842 – 1889).
Thomas and Jane had three very eligible daughters. The eldest, Margaret married into the Willoughby family, which had contemporary links through marriage to the Ryland family and thus to Richard Alfred Pinsent (later Sir Richard Alfred Pinsent) from the DEVONPORT branch of the family. Margaret’s son, Captain Edwin Charles Willoughby died at Gallipoli in 1915 – this was a few days before Richard Alfred’s son, Lieutenant Laurence Alfred Pinsent (1894 – 1915) suffered the same fate. Both families lived near Cheltenham and they were obviously close. In the 1930s, Sir Richard’s eldest son, Roy Pinsent (1883 – 1978) was asked “in loco parentis” to “give away” Captain Edwin Charles’s two daughters when they married. It is likely through the Willoughby and Devonport Pinsent connection that my father obtained a copy of Thomas Pynsent’s memorandum.
Joseph Pinsent (1770 – 1835)
Joseph Pinsent (1770 – 1835) was John Pinsent and Susanna’s (née Pooke) youngest son and little more than an infant when his parents died in 1772. Joseph and three of his brothers (Gilbert, Samuel and Charles Pinsent) were sent to “Pitt Farm” in Hennock to be brought up by his uncle Thomas and his aunt Mary. They had no children of their own and probably appreciated having the boys around. One of them, Samuel Pinsent (1767 – 1775), died shortly after their arrival but the others grew up around the farm and eventually became farmers in their turn.
Joseph, however, had other interests as well. He joined his eldest brother John Pinsent in London and was working with a firm of “Ships’ Insurance Brokers” in 1798. He joined the “Company of Patternmakers” three years later – not that he had any intention of becoming a “pattern maker”. It was a strategic move, as one had to belong to a guild – any guild – to obtain a “Citizenship of London” and that was a prerequisite for operating a business in the City. At about this time, he set up as an independent “Ships Broker and Agent” (someone who arranges for the sale and purchase of ships and for the placing and shipping of cargo) based out of Birchin Lane, in London. The move was not perhaps so surprising as Joseph’s elder brothers John and William Pinsent were involved in trans-Atlantic shipping and the Newfoundland cod fishery.
Joseph seems to have done well for himself; however, his business suffered during the economic recession that followed the Napoleonic wars. It gave him time to think, and to write open letters to senior politicians and editors of London newspapers expounding his own particular brand of political economy. He seems to have advocated “doing away with restrictive practices and let(ting) all imports be made in British ships”. That sounds like a contradiction. In essence, he wanted to see Britain encourage free trade with its own colonies and reduce imports from foreign countries – especially those that were coming in on foreign ships. He argued that the size and climatic range of Britain’s possessions over-seas should allow it to produce almost anything it wanted, and that trade between the colonies and an increasingly industrialized Britain would benefit both. He signed his letters, Joseph Pinsent “a real Pittite” as he thought, maybe wrongly, that his hero, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, would have approved of this (fundamentally isolationist) policy.
Although he lived in London, Joseph Pinsent was a Devonian through and through and, while running his business and conducting his war of correspondence with unresponsive politicians, he also ran a small (and questionably economic) upland farm, at “Lettaford”, on Dartmoor. Joseph Pinsent married three times. His first two marriages have been mentioned previously. He married Anna Thomasin Croat Pinsent (1777 – 1799), the granddaughter of Mr. John Pinsent (1723 – 1800) of Moretonhampstead, the DEVONPORT family “tallow chandler”, in Newton Abbot in May 1799. Unfortunately, she died a few months later – not long after they had taken up residence in London. It was not exactly renowned for its public health in those days.
Joseph then married her cousin, another of Mr. John Pinsent’s granddaughters, Elizabeth Pinsent (1777 – 1809) in June 1800. They had three sons including the short-lived Joseph William Pitt Burton Pinsent (1804 – 1805) mentioned previously. Joseph seems to have been obsessed by Sir William Pynsent and his bequest to William Pitt, Earl of Chatham! Joseph’s eldest daughter, Mary Anna Lambert Pinsent (1802 -1809) and his youngest son, John Robert Pinsent (1807 – 1808), also died young; however, two of his children by Elizabeth – a son Joseph Burton Pinsent (1806 -1874) and a daughter, Elizabeth Satterley Pinsent (1805 – 1878) lived to marry.
Elizabeth Satterley Pinsent married William Francis Splatt in 1840. They relocated to Australia shortly afterwards and William made a fortune for himself running sheep in Victoria, before returning to Devon. The couple settled in the Torquay area where Mr. Splatt became a “merchant”, a “landowner”, a “magistrate” and, late in life, the first “Mayor” of Torquay.
William Francis Splatt helped two of his Pinsent brothers’-in-law advance in their respective careers. Firstly, he partnered with Joseph Burton Pinsent in his efforts to import grain into Bristol. He also helped Joseph set up in business as a “general merchant” on Elizabeth Street in Melbourne when he followed his sister out there. Joseph’s building and its adjacent warehouse at “Heape Court” have withstood the ravages of time and the latter is now a well-known pioneer heritage building in “downtown” Melbourne. Secondly, Mr. Splatt employed his wife’s young half-brother, Charles Pitt Pynsent and, when he returned to England, went into partnership with him running sheep; more about that later.
Joseph Burton Pinsent (1806 – 1874) was the only surviving son of Joseph by his second wife, Elizabeth (née Pinsent). He grew up in London and Lettaford and, eventually, went into business importing grain from Ireland. He had a warehouse by the quay on the “Welsh Back” in Bristol – or at least he did until he overloaded the upper floor in April 1840 and the building collapsed! Mr. Splatt, his brother-in-law, appears to have been a sleeping partner while he was setting up the business. Joseph Burton married the daughter of another Bristol “merchant,” Mary Anna Ogden Hassell, in 1836 and they had their only child, Thomas Ogden Pinsent (1839 – 1864) in 1839. Try as he might, the business proved to be marginal given the amount of grain coming in from elsewhere and he had to be bailed out by two friends and an Ogden relative in 1843.
Joseph, or “Burton,” as he was generally known, tried to diversify and import wool from Melbourne; however, even that was risky. In 1842 he wrote a scathing letter to Lord Stanley at the “Colonial Office” in London complaining about the postmaster in Melbourne. He argued, quite reasonably, that if you sent business correspondence in triplicate by different routes to ensure that the message got through, you should expect at least one of them to arrive at the correct destination. It did not help if the post master sent all three letters on the same ship. He had suffered a financial loss and this may have contribulted to his financial embarrassment the following year -no Skype or FaceTime then.
By 1852, Joseph Burton had had enough and he set sail for Australia in the S.S. Great Britain with his young son, Thomas Ogden in tow. Joseph wrote letters home to his family and friends describing the voyage and had them published in a Bristol newspaper. It was probably an advertising ploy as much as anything as he tried to encourage business with his Bristol contacts.
Burton’s half-brother Charles Pitt used the name “Pynsent” and almost inevitably Burton changed his name on arrival. Burton built a “general store” on Elizabeth Street that serviced prospectors heading for “the diggings” and, despite being broken-into in 1855, he seems to have been very fairly successful importing and selling goods until the “gold rush” fever in Victoria started to dissipated. His business failed in 1859. By then he was on his own. His sister and half-brother had already returned to England. After selling up, he turned to dairy farming in the nearby community of St. Kilda. Sadly, his son, Thomas Ogden Pynsent (Tom) died of tuberculosis in New South Wales, in 1864. He had yet to marry.
Burton may have originally planned for his wife, Mary Anna Pinsent, to join him in Australia. She sold their house in Bristol in 1854 saying that she was heading out to Victoria – but there is no evidence that she did so. She drops out of sight. Burton had started a common law relationship with Mary Bridget Fogarty, a Roman Catholic, by then and the relationship had produced four children by 1862. Bridget found it necessary to sue Burton for financial support that year. He acknowledged the children as his own (The Age: Wednesday 30th July 1862) and the couple must have reconciled as they added two more in 1865 and 1869. They were still quite young when their parents died and they must have had a few difficult years trying to keep their small dairy farm going.
Three of Burton’s sons Burton William Pynsent (1856 – 1856), Burton Michael Pynsent (1861 – 1876) and Charles Pynsent (1865 – 1878) died young. However, the other two survived. Of these, the younger one, Alfred Thomas Pynsent (1869 – 1911) joined the “New South Wales Bushmen,” a mounted regiment and served in South Africa during the Boer War. He returned home in 1901. He seems to have died, unmarried, in Sydney in 1911. It was left to Burton’s one remaining son, Joseph William Pynsent (1862 – 1926) to continue the family line – which he certainly did. Joseph William moved to New South Wales and, like his father before him, ran a small dairy farm at Bondi, east of Sydney. He later moved to Marrickville, which was then rural but is now another suburb. Joseph William married Nellie Garland and they had at least ten children (including four sons) over twenty-five years! The boys worked on the farm and in the dairy until their father retired. He sold the dairy to William Arthur Walker, in 1922.
Joseph William’s eldest son, a second Joseph Burton Pynsent (1890 – 1968), appears to have left home and became a “general labourer”. He married Ethel Maud Budd in 1917 and they had a son, Alfred Thomas Pynsent (xxxx – 1628) who became a “painter” (probably of houses). Alfred married Olive Victoria Davis in 1942 but died childless. His brother, Joseph William’s second son Charles Pitt Pynsent (1893 – 1975), married Margaret O’Donnell in 1931. They had a son named Joseph William Pynsent (1932 – 1987) who also became a “painter”. He married and had children, some of whom are doubtless alive today.
Joseph William Pynsent (“senior”) and Nellie’s (née Garland) third son, Alfred Francis Pynsent (1896 – 1981), served in the Australian Armed Forces during the First World War, survived and returned to Australia in 1919. He married Elsie Florence Jefferies three years later and had several children in the 1920s. Their offspring are also most likely, still living.
Thomas Ogden Pynsent (1905 – 1980), was the fourth and youngest son of Joseph William Pynsent (“senior”) and Nellie (née Garland). He worked as a “dairyman” as a boy. However, he later became a “lorry” (truck) driver. Thomas married Lillian Mary May Clough in 1931 and, like many of his brothers and uncles before him, had a large family that included at least one surviving son, Norman Michael Pinsent (1943 – 1997). I am not sure if he married and had children. The patriarch of this extended family, Joseph William Pynsent, and his wife Nellie Garland also had at least six daughters who married, so the “Pynsent” have certainly left their mark in Australia.
Meanwhile, back in England in the early 1800s: Joseph Pinsent married Ann Tucker of Drewsteignton after his second second wife, Elizabeth (née Pinsent) died. She produced three more sons and four daughters. They grew up in London and also on the family farm at Lettaford in Devon. The eldest son, Robert Baring Pinsent (1818 – 1833) died at sea while still a boy. Sadly the circumstances of his death are not recorded and I know very little about him. His death is referred to on a monument erected to honour Joseph in North Bovey parish church.
Their next son, Ferdinand Alfred Pynsent (1822 – 1894) married Emma Furlonge in the West Indies in 1847. It is not clear what he was doing there! However, Ferdinand took holy orders and returned to England where he became a long-time Rector of the parish of Bawdeswell, in Norfolk. They had no children. The Rev. Samuel Francis Wingfield Homfray was a close neighbour and it is presumably through Rev. Ferdinand that his second cousin (Sir) Robert John Pinsent (above) met his second wife, Emily Hetty Sabine Homfray, a circumstance that bode well for my eventual existence.
Joseph Pinsent’s third son by Ann (née Tucker), Charles Pitt Pynsent (1824 – 1903) went out to Australia as a young man to manage a large sheep run owned by his step brother-in-law, William Francis Splatt. The run, on the Wimmera River, near Horsham, west of Melbourne in Victoria reputedly comprised 20,000 merino sheep on 140,000 acres. Charles married Georgiana Helen Ball while out there in 1852. This was shortly before his half-brother, Joseph Burton Pynsent (above), arrived to set up store on Elizabeth Street in Melbourne. Mr. Splatt acquired other sheep runs and returned to Devon a wealthy man. Before he did so, he went into a partnership agreement with Charles Pitt and left him in complete control of the business. The Wimmera River and other ventures must have been good investments as Charles Pitt and Georgiana returned to England extremely rich. They embarked on several years of travel in Europe with their first cousin, Thomas Pynsent (late of “Pitt Farm”) and his wife Jane (née Sparrow). However, Charles eventually tired of travel and, after becoming bored with England, sold his residual interests both there and in Australia (including the “Craigieburn Hotel” and adjacent lands on the outskirts of Melbourne) and took his wife and children out to New Zealand. There, he bought a sheep and dairy farm at “Te Aratewaka”, near Wanganui. Charles Pitt Pynsent died in Wellington in 1903 and his son, who was by then living in England, gradually wound up and sold off his estate.
Charles Pitt and Georgiana had six children, including two sons. Unfortunately, the eldest, Charles Joseph Pynsent (1858 – 1870), who was born in Bonn in Germany died young after the family had relocated to New Zealand. Charles Pitt’s second son, Robert Burton Pynsent (1869 – 1953) was born in Heidelberg, also in Germany. He was brought up in New Zealand but educated in England. He studied law at Cambridge University and he was called to the Bar in 1893.
When Charles Pitt Pynsent died in 1903, his widow, Georgiana (née Ball), returned to England to be close to her son, Robert Burton Pynsent, who was to marry Mary Isobel Addie three years later. They had a son Charles Burton Pynsent (1907 – 1967) the following year. Robert Burton and his wife also had two daughters, one of whom, (Joan Isobel Pynsent (1909 – 1998)) turns up elsewhere in this story as the Third Officer W.R.N.S. who was confused with Joan Constance Pinsent (1917 – xxxx), a Second Officer W.R.N.S., during the Second World War. The latter came from the INDIA branch of the family. Joan Isobel Pynsent never married.
Charles Burton Pynsent became a lawyer, like his father. He married Lorna Ruth Tasman Moss, in Lahore, India, in 1933. What he was doing there, I do not know. They divorced and both of them remarried during the Second World War. Charles Burton was a “Pilot Officer” in the “Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve” when he married Bessie Florence Hunt, in Windsor, in Berkshire in 1941. He later became a “Flight Officer”. I am not aware of any children from his first marriage but there were two sons from the second. They are still alive today.
Charles’s erstwhile wife, Lorna, married Captain John Turner Bell of the (Canadian) “Hamilton Light Infantry”, at Aldershot, in Hampshire in 1941. He was an architect who, presumably, took her back to Ontario after the war.
Despite high mortality rates, at least two long-lived branches of the Pinsent family seems to have been living side by side in the Teign Valley throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. By the early 1800s, the DEVONPORT branch was well represented by Mr. John Pinsent of Moretonhampstead (the “soap boiler”) and his offspring, and the HENNOCK line by Thomas Pinsent of “Pitt Farm” and his descendants. The families certainly knew each other – as Joseph Pinsent’s two marriages clearly attest! However, they were not alone. There were other Pinsent’s around who belonged to other lines. For instance, there was a Thomas Pinsent (1738 – 1825) living in TIVERTON and an Abraham Pinson (1787 – 1871) in Lustleigh from the BRISTOL family, as well as another Joseph Pinsent (1748 – 1837) in Bovey Tracey (TEIGNMOUTH). The Pinsents had distant cousins scattered around the County and the Country and by then some of them had also gone overseas.
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